Analysis of Tropospheric Contribution to GPS Positioning Error During Tropospheric Cyclone Marcus in 2018

Abstract

GNSS positioning performance assessment is essential for sustainable development of a growing number of GNSS-based technology and socio-economic applications. Case-studies of GNSS positioning performance in critical environments and applications scenarios reveals vulnerabilities of the GNSS Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) services, and suggest mitigation techniques and GNSS application risk containment. Here we address the case of GPS positioning performance during a devastating tropical cyclone Marcus that hit the greater area of the city of Darwin, Australia in 2018. We identified specific statistical properties of time series of tropospheric contribution to GPS northing, easting, and vertical positioning error that may contribute to understanding of tropospheric effects on GPS positioning performance during a massive weather deterioration in maritime and coastal areas, and analysed their adversarial effects on GNSS-based maritime applications.

Keywords

• global navigation satellite system (gnss)
• global positioning system (gps)
• cyclone marcus
• positioning, navigation, and timing (pnt)
• port darwin
• nasa earth observatory
• tropospheric correction
• software-defined radio (sdr)